Video, More Than Just Faces on Screens

Looking into the crystal ball, I see that video collaboration will not be just about faces on screens, especially for GenY and the young executive. It’s about customizing and manipulating video so that it becomes additive to the business and decision-making process – making the user smarter because of it and the experience “better than being there.”

A recent survey of up-and-coming young executives found effectiveness to be a key driver for visual collaboration. Namely, respondents said they want to be able to see the visual cues that aid in effective communications, to appear present in a meeting, to quickly edit and share video content, and to be able to collaborate on content as if they and their globally-disparate teams are all in the same room. And they want it deployed pervasively.

These requirements are moving visual collaboration from the nice-to-have bucket to the critical-business-tool bucket. Young executives will expect video to be embedded in mission-critical business applications, much in the same way that email, IM and mobility are today, accessible from wherever they are – Starbucks to the boardroom – and on the device of their choosing.

It’s no surprise that this generation is also known as the Internet Generation, Generation We, Generation Me, Global Generation, Generation Next and the Net Generation. What it boils down to is this is a generation of tech savvy people who are used to the global immediacy afforded by the Internet serving them customized information at their whim. Accordingly, survey respondents say they want to be able to search, share, enhance and tweet video in real time. They want to be able to see language translation appear when speaking over video to someone who doesn’t speak the same language … or have the name and location of that person pop up on screen … or simultaneously edit the same content from opposite ends of the earth.

What’s clear is that future GenY leaders want more from video than just faces on screens. And why shouldn’t they? This is not the stuff of Star Trek. It is fully within in our grasp – and in the not-too-distant future – to deliver video that is flexible, malleable, intelligent and expansive.

Tell me what you expect from video. Maybe it will make it into the next Cisco video product.

1 Comments.

Hello Snorre, I agree with your comments in your blog. However, it’s not only GenY that is requesting and often demanding video as you describe it – easy to use, on-demand utilising a powerful yet friendly user interface. As a Video Managed Service provider, UCi2i is delivering on this demand, and building features and functions into our own software products to empower users and make video available wherever you are. Take V-Book for example, this is our end user application that allows the user to make and manage point to point and multiparty video calls without the need to engage IT or anyone technical, and as such we have seen the use of our video services drive usage and demand in each and every customer we have. It takes all the technical management tools usually only available to IT support, and delivers it to the user in an easy to use, simple and intuitive interface, that’s available from any device and can call any device.
One of the many things that we are developing is a feature rich workspace, one that anyone can use as their day to day work space. You mention the demand for features beyond video, but within video, like content and file sharing, this is high on our agenda and so is social media integration and email etc… So as the demand grows so will our products, and so will Cisco’s, and the knock on effect from easier to use and feature rich video communications – which will be used as much for home and personal use as it will for work and business. What we’re building is a place to work, collaborate and communicate for the user whether they’re in business mode or consumer mode, all in one.

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